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GNEWS No 57, February 2017

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GNEWS No 57, February 2017 SOUTH AFRICAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOCIETY GNEWS KwaZulu-Natal Branch Newsletter Number 57 February 2017 c/o KwaZulu-Natal Museum Private Bag 9070 Pietermaritzburg 3200 Forthcoming events 11 March, 10h30, KwaZulu-Natal Museum, Pietermaritzburg: Annalie Kleinloog will speak on ‘Trails of yesteryear’. 8 April, 10h30, Natural History Museum, Durban: KZN Branch AGM. Jeremy Hollmann will speak on the rescue of Cederberg rock art sites from flooding. 13 May, 10h30, KwaZulu-Natal Museum, Pietermaritzburg: National AGM. Society President Jan Boeyens will speak on the cultural significance of rhinos in traditional African societies. Past events The summaries included here first appeared on the Facebook page of the KwaZulu- Natal Branch of the South African Archaeological Society (see https://www. facebook.com/ArchaeologicalSocietyKZN). Also included is a report the Society of Africanist Archaeologists conference held in 2016 in Toulouse, France. ‘Evidence for the earliest ivory trade in southern Africa: analysis of ivory from Early Iron Age sites in KwaZulu-Natal’, a talk by Ashley Coutu, 10 May 2016 Ivory has been exported from Africa for longer than any other of the continent’s resources, at huge cost to elephants. In the early 1600s, the elephant population in South Africa was an estimated 100,000. By 1920, the slaughter had reduced that number to about 150. This wanton killing supplied people across the world with various rather trivial ivory knick-knacks – piano keys, chess pieces, and handles for cutlery, hair brushes and combs. Trade volumes were far smaller in precolonial times, 1 The uMngeni valley in 1988. KwaGandaganda is marked by the patch of darker green in the bend of the river (photo: Gavin Whitelaw). but the export of ivory from South Africa has a long, 1100-year history. Ashley Coutu presented evidence that might extend this history by 200 years, and take it deep into KwaZulu-Natal. Ashley spoke about her research on ivory artefacts from three Early Iron Age sites in our region. The sites are the settlement remains of African farmers who lived between 1400 and 1000 years ago (see Gnews 56 and the online story, 2016/7). Two of the sites, Wosi and Ndondondwane, are in the Thukela valley below Kranskop. The third, KwaGandaganda, is in the uMngeni valley near Durban. All three yielded ivory bangles and pendants, as well as quantities of waste debris. By contrast, ivory is rare at other similar sites excavated in our region. Because of their size and the kinds of artefacts they contained, we believe that Wosi, Ndondondwane and KwaGandaganda were the homes of chiefs. This status partly explains the ivory – elephant tusks were brought to chiefs as tribute. Their high value probably relates to the workability of elephant ivory, as well as its special symbolism – elephants were associated with the origins of life on earth, and tusks with male virility. For this reason, elephant tusks were a ‘chiefly’ material, because chiefs were responsible for the fertile productivity of the land. So it is interesting that Ashley’s first analysis, using a technique called ‘mass spectrometry’, shows that all the carved ivory came from elephants, even though people also hunted hippos, warthogs and bushpigs, which all have tusks. Ashley also analysed carbon and nitrogen isotopes in the ivory. Isotopes are forms of chemical elements which differ in their atomic weight. Carbon, for instance, has 2 Elephant tusk at KwaGandaganda (photo: Gavin Whitelaw). three natural isotopes with atomic weights of 12, 13 and 14. Animals absorb these isotopes into their bodies from food and water, so the ratios between isotopes in an animal’s body can tell us something of its diet and environment. Ashley’s analyses yielded an unexpected result. The elephants that grew the ivory found at Wosi, Ndondondwane and KwaGandaganda lived in an astonishingly wide variety of environments, from dense forests to open grasslands, from moist environments to arid zones. The isotopic range for each site is far greater than the ranges obtained from any major elephant population in South Africa today, including the Kruger National Park population which is spread across nearly 20,000 square kilometres. Ivory waste flakes and shavings on the left, with artefacts on the right (photos: Ashley Coutu). 3 Apart from implying an enormous hunting catchment for each site, the isotopic analysis shows that the three sites had different catchments. We’d expect this for KwaGandaganda in the uMngeni valley, but Wosi and Ndondondwane in the Thukela valley are only 3 km apart. It seems likely that the Thukela river that flows between them was a political boundary that separated two chiefdoms. Some questions emerge. Who hunted the elephants? Did hunting parties set out from farming communities living in the low-lying valleys, perhaps on the chief ’s instruction? Did hunter-gatherers living beyond the valleys hunt the elephants and carry the tusks to the chiefs’ homesteads for exchange purposes? Was there a mix of these strategies? Did hunter-gatherer bands attach themselves to particular chiefdoms and so contribute to the three-catchment signature? Whatever answers might emerge, the isotopic evidence indicates a regionally extensive programme of ivory acquisition at all three sites. Were these programmes for local consumption only? Or is it possible that chiefs were seeking ivory to supply the Indian Ocean trade network? If trade was the goal, then KwaZulu-Natal has the earliest evidence so far for an international ivory trade in South Africa, in the 700s. Research time will tell. Gavin Whitelaw ‘Poison, plants and people in the past’, a talk by Chrissie Sievers, 11 June 2016 Chrissie Sievers spoke to a lively audience at the Durban Natural Science Museum on the use of poison in human history. Chrissie is an archaeobotanist at Wits University and so plants are her special interest, but she also mentioned various animals that yield useful poisons. Chrissie started with some well-known poisoning cases: the Russian whistleblower Alexander Perepilichny who died in England in 2012, supposedly poisoned by ‘heartbreak grass’ (Gelsemium elegans); and Georgi Markov, the Bulgarian author and playwright killed in London in 1978 with a pellet containing ricin, fired into his leg with an umbrella gun. These two poisons illustrate a theme that ran through Chrissie’s talk. The plants that produce poison are often useful for medicinal purposes. Ricin and the medicinal castor oil, for instance, come from the seeds of the same plant, Ricinus communis. In some cases, dosage determines the result. In others, different applications or different parts of the plant have different consequences. As Friar Laurence muses while collecting wild plants in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: Within the infant rind of this weak flower Poison hath residence and medicine power. For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part; Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart. Two such opposèd kings encamp them still, In man as well as herbs – grace and rude will. (Act 2, scene 3) 4 Friar Laurence with his raw materials, illustrated by John Gilbert and published 1865 in The works of Shakespeare (George Routledge and Sons). A few years ago, archaeologists identified ricin on what they believe was a poison applicator in 24,000 year-old levels at Border Cave in the Lubombo mountains in northern KwaZulu-Natal. The identification is controversial because most botanists don’t believe that Ricinus communis is indigenous to South Africa. Did it grow here 24,000 years ago? Is the Border Cave substance correctly identified, or is it something that is chemically similar to ricin? We have more certainty about the burning of tamboti (Spirostachys africana) in a 49,000 year-old hearth at Sibhudu Cave, inland of Tongaat. Tamboti has a poisonous sap which can bring on a life-threatening allergic reaction or cause burn-like lesions that last for weeks. In a fire tamboti produces a smoke that is at first pleasantly aromatic, but which soon makes people sick. Food cooked over a tamboti fire can be deadly. So why did people at Sibhudu collect and burn it? They surely knew of its dangerous properties. Were they making poison? Or producing an insect-repelling smoke? Interestingly, the tamboti hearth is situated more than 2 m away from a cluster of three other hearths in the same level, perhaps safely distant from where people slept, but still close enough for its smoke to keep those annoying mosquitoes away. An image that comes to mind when thinking about poison use is that of a Bushman hunter with his bow and poisoned arrows. Although evidence suggests that some hunters might have used powerful recurved bows and heavy arrows, southern African bows and arrows were more commonly lightweight tools that could not inflict a killing blow. Rather, they were tools to administer a poison dose. So for scholars of indigenous poisons, it is worth investigating how hunters today make arrows and 5 Three stages in the life cycle of the Chrysomelid beetle found under a marula tree in Tsumkwe. A. the gold and black-spotted beetle, pink, naked grub and earthen cocoon containing the grub; B. Polyclada sp. grub, dorsal and ventral views; C. Polyclada sp. grub mouthparts. Scale 1 mm; D. Polyclada sp. grub mouthparts. Scale 200 μm. Photos courtesy of Lyn Wadley. poison. For this reason, several archaeologists spent time between 2013 and 2015 recording the practices of six Ju/’hoan hunters in the Nyae Nyae Conservancy of Namibia. Poison production in Nyae Nyae is a complex, varying process with no single recipe. The most important ingredient is a larva of a Chrysomelid beetle, which hunters dig up from beneath infected marula trees. It is guts of the larva that are so poisonous. Generally, the hunters add larvae guts to an extract from tubers of the Asparagus exuvialis plant, which prevents the wounded animal from urinating and excreting the poison.
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